Functional-semantic and expressive potential of the oxymoron in Russian poetry of the XIX century.

Abstract

Abstract The present article is devoted to the study of antonyms as a stylistic device based on opposites and contradictions, the identification of means of expressiveness. The object of the study is the stylistic figure “oxymoron", considered on the material of poetry of the XIX century. The purpose of the research is to reveal and comprehend the specific essence and features of the oxymoron as a category of poetics, to identify the relationship with the verbal poetic image as a kind of absurdity and paradox. The acceptance of speech paradoxes is explained by allophrony. Special attention is paid to the structural and semantic possibilities of an antonymic pair in the context of a deliberately used speech error. The work is carried out in line with the descriptive method of linguistics. The results of our linguistic research allow us to draw some conclusions: that the linguistic phenomenon is an oxymoron, is anomalous to words with a direct meaning and is characterized in science as a paradox. The acceptance of speech paradoxes, despite the contradictions, is explained by allophrony. The increased expressiveness of the oxymoron is achieved by contrasting, opposites, a combination of epithets incomprehensible to logic, in which a vivid manifestation of feelings, moods, thoughts is expressed, it is implied as an incorrect, unfair combination of ideas in one whole, that is, as a violation, as something that does not have the right to exist in a work of art due to inconsistency, logically mutually exclusive each other even before direct interaction. The oxymoron as a phenomenon of poetic and empirical reality is used as metaphorical names of any physiological deviations in the description of heroes, anomalies in nature containing a paradox. The minimal structure of the oxymoron is a phrase, it is the result of a fusion of contrasting meanings. An adjective and a noun interact in an oxymoron, less often an adverb and a verb, a verb and a adverb, an adverb and an adjective.